This invention relates to conveyors and more particularly to a Discharge Conveyor for receiving palletized cartons from a carton palletizer and for automatically placing such palletized cartons onto a wheeled vehicle or truck for movement thereby away from the carton palletizer.
Pallet loaders are devised for automatically stacking cartons in interlocking relation upon a pallet for movement as a unit to a place of storage, rehandling and shipping by other means of transportation. Such palletizers are well known in the art as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 2,769,179 or U.S. Pat. No. 2,883,074, as well as my co pending application Ser. No. 418,945 filed Nov. 26, 1973, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,856,158.
Heretofore, the pallets with cartons thereon had to be taken from the palletizer by a fork-lift and placed thereby onto flat bed dollies, trucks and the like for movement to a place of use or storage. In some establishments, the palletized cartons are preferably placed on individual flat bed hand trucks for movement in tandem fashion like a train of cars pulled by a draft vehicle. The time consumed in transferring each loaded pallet from the palletizer onto such hand trucks by means of a fork-lift can be very expensive and time consuming. It is such a problem that the present invention seeks to alleviate by the provision of a Discharge Conveyor assembly between a palletizer and individual flat-bed hand trucks which are suitably placed to receive palletized cartons directly and automatically from the palletizer without the need of fork-lift equipment.